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Tuesday, August 12, 2014

By capturing and processing data from cyclists in the German city of Wiesbaden, the city is putting paths where they're actually needed.

When the German city of Wiesbaden was voted the worst city for cycling in the country by a bike organization, a local creative agency decided to help change that with a new app called Radwende: As cyclists ride down city streets, the app traces each route and adds it to a giant crowdsourced map of suggested bike paths in the city.

Designers at Scholz and Volkmer saw it as a way to bring new digital approach to a problem that was a struggle for government and advocacy organizations.

"We believe in change, because a lot of people in City Hall as well as citizens want it to happen," says agency founder Michael Volkmer, who was the driving force behind the project. "But it's a chicken-and-egg problem: The city doesn't invest if people don't cycle. People do not cycle because it's not safe. We believe that design and technology can fix that."

Since late May, local cyclists have captured data from nearly 3,000 rides. A robot processes the data from each day and traces the routes, one by one, out onto a map, so viewers can watch as the most popular routes get thicker and thicker--showing exactly where a new bike lane might be most helpful.

The robot and map are just finished a run on display at an art museum. "The results were open to the public from the very beginning on the Radwende website," says Volkmer. "It was just that the art world picked it up quicker than the politicians--that's why we got the chance to build the machine in the museum."

The city government has been closely watching the results; the mayor was one of the first people to get a printed version of the map, and members of city council have attended riding events...